Wednesday, 15 June 2016

A selection of lichens found around my village.

Hello everyone

An amendment to the title of this post.
I posted this one on the 15th of June. It's now the 3rd of July and I have just seen that I made a mistake in the title. This post is about lichens, for some reason, I used the word "fungi" instead, I'm sorry, I've now corrected it.

Almost all the refurbishing of your house is finished, it's been a long, stressful time. I've not had the time, or concentration to do a blog post here. I really wanted to post some of my artwork and talk a bout it. Due to other pressing issues, that will have to wait. The post below is one I put up on the private members FEET blog. For new readers, FEET stands for Freshwater Environmental Ecology Trust. You should find a link to the public FEET blog and to the Cromwell Bottom Nature reserve ion the right side of this blog. blog post up.

I hope at least some of you enjoy it.

This blog is something for my readers to look at until I have time to put my next Art

I have no idea what most of these lichens are and am hoping to get an ID of some of them later. If and when I do, I shall update this post and name them all.

There are quite a few photos, some of these lichens I've not seen before. Or perhaps I should say, I've not seen certain aspects of them. The orange fruiting bodies on some are an example. Also, there are one or two lichens with dark brown or black cilia (hairs or spines) on the outside edges of them, and one has a mass of dark Cilia on the underside of the thalus. This I'm told is quite common, but it's the first time I have seen it. There are two brown lichens here, (they may be the same species). It's the first time I have seen a brown lichen. All in all, the day I took all the shots below was a very good day as far as I was concerned.

One thing I should say, is that one or two photos are of the same lichen, one being a close-up, the other from a little futher away, to give a good idea of what they look like.

Right, now for the photographs.

My first sight of a brown lichen.

I wondered if these were tiny Oak Moss.
They were growing all over the walls,
some of them were very tiny, baby lichens.

Note the dark cilia on the

outside edges of the lichen.

My other brown lichen. It may be be

the same as the first, but the thalus

was much bigger, it could be an older one.

Note the dark cilia

underneath the thalus.

The orange parts are, I assume,

the fruiting bodies. Cillia are

pointed out in green text.

The dark spots are the

fruiting bodies, or soredia.

This crustose lichen covers large

areas of walls. They are very small

lichens, you will need a good

hand lens to look at them

This is the first pink lichen thalus

I've seen, I assume it's fruiting.

The orange spheres are fruiting bodies.

It's the first time I've ever seen

this colour on lichens.

More crustose lichens covering large areas.

The photo below is a close-up of

this shot, showing fruiting bodies.

All I can say about this one,

is that it is very common around here.

I still couldn't ID it though.

A crustose form I've not noticed before.

This crustose is a close-up of the one below.

This pink crustose was new to me.

There are other lichens growing among it.

Parmotrema reticulatum TBC.

Note the cilia and fruiting bodies.

I should know this one, I recognised it,

but again, could not ID it.

I do know the last one in this post. It grows on trees and also on rocks. It's unusual, in that it's an algae without the lichen part. Lichens are a symbiotic relationship of fungi and algae. They are not plants, but still, they are something more than plants. There is a terrible joke in the naturalist community; A lichen is a fungus and an algae, and they’re likin’ one another. Sorry, not my joke, but I had to share it. The one below manages to get by as an algae alone, in a range of situations. It will cover large areas of trees. Last year, or perhaps 2014, I posted a photo of a tree covered in this which I found in Cunnery Wood, Shibden.

Trentepohlia abietina.

Well, that's it. It was a very interesting day out for me, all those new discoveries. I'm sure they are all extremely common, but to find something new to me is always exciting. I know they are tricky little things but I'd LOVE to be good at lichens. It would be nice to meet someone who knows a lot about them to help me learn. Ah well, time and practice will help. I hope you found these as interesting as I did.

As I said, I don't know what most of these are, but it's better to record them and worry about their names afterwards.